As a retired licensed specialist clinical social worker with two decades of counseling with people in Fall River, I fully appreciate and understand their desire to do something to bring improvement to their economic situation.

Shirley Denison

As a retired licensed specialist clinical social worker with two decades of counseling with people in Fall River, I fully appreciate and understand their desire to do something to bring improvement to their economic situation.

Like a drowning man grasping for a straw in the hope it will keep him afloat, those desperate to improve their finances have the dream that if they play their dollars at a casino, they will walk away much richer. Or perhaps it is the belief that casinos bring jobs to the community. Both very worthy goals. But let’s look at what really happens.

First of all, while the community is being built, those in the construction business certainly will find a sudden demand for their skills. But what happens after that? What is the effect on the community five or 10 years later?

On Sept. 27, 2007, David A. Mittell Jr., a member of the Providence Journal editorial staff wrote an article explaining how the casinos hurt the economy. “They are simply a scheme for moving huge sums of money from the many to the few, and generally from the poor to the rich. ... Much of it ... would come from the productive economy here in Massachusetts, as citizens choose not to patronize local businesses, not to take their children to local (events) but rather to visit casinos ... where by careful design customers are induced to spend all their money within the casino.”

In other words a dollar cannot be spent twice. If spent at the casino, it will not be spent in local stores, and as local businesses close, people will lose their jobs and the state will have less revenue from the failed stores.

Steve Wynn, Mirage Resort chairman, several years back was reported to have actually said to a group of businessmen in Bridgeport, Conn., “Get it straight ... there is no reason on earth for any of you to expect for more than one second that just because there are people here they’re going to run into your store, or restaurant, or bar ... It is illogical to expect that people who won’t come to Bridgeport and go to your restaurants or your stores today will go to your restaurants and stores just because we happen to build this (casino) here.”

By 2006, New Jersey had 17 casinos, yet in 2006 they had to temporarily shut down the state government due to a budget crisis. So while there will be some on-going new jobs at the casino (many of them low-paying), there will also be many lost jobs at local businesses. Is this just theory? Look at what has happened elsewhere.

According to Restaurant Business bulletin, in Atlantic City, the number of restaurants declined from 243 in 1977, the year after casinos were legalized, to 146 in 1987, and in Minnesota restaurant businesses within a 30-mile radius of casinos with food service fell by 20 to 50 percent. Or from the Regional Economic Impact of the Atlantic City Casino Industry: “In the four years following the introduction of casinos in Atlantic City, the number of retail business in that city declined about a third.” Is that what we want for Fall River?

In an article in the Boston Globe, Dec. 8, 2010, Michael Pollock, managing director of Spectrum Gaming, is quoted as having said, “We didn’t realize it at the time, but 2006 and 2007 in Atlantic City and Las Vegas “was really too good to be true. People were spending more than they could afford.” Or, as Bob Stupak, a Las Vegas casino owner said: “We target everybody. That’s the business I’m in. Money’s money. What’s the difference if it’s a Social Security check, a welfare check or a stock dividend?”

Back in August 2001, Bishop Sean O’Malley of Fall River (now Cardinal O’Malley) was quoted as telling a reporter, “I resent the fact that this area of the state, where there are so many low-income people, is continuously being targeted as an ideal place for a casino because these are the people who are the most vulnerable to the whole gambling syndrome. To target Fall River and New Bedford, why don’t they have it on Nantucket?”

Shirley Denison, of Somerset, is a retired licensed specialist clinical social worker.